Posts Tagged ‘Chronic Care Management’

Medicare Chronic Care Management services reduced healthcare utilization and likelihood of hospital admissions for CCM recipients, according to a new CMS report.

Beneficiaries who received Chronic Care Management (CCM) services experienced a lower growth rate in healthcare expenditures compared to those who did not receive CCM services, according to a new evaluation report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

The lower rate of growth in total Medicare per beneficiary per month (PBPM) expenditures ranged from $28 to $74, after removing the average monthly CCM fee of $29.

The Medicare and Medicaid payor released the report on the diffusion and impact of CCM payment during the program’s first two years of implementation.

In January 2015, CMS introduced a separately billable non-face-to-face Chronic Care Management service (CPT code 99490). The goal of CCM is to improve Medicare beneficiaries’ access to chronic care management in primary care.

Here are seven more findings from the evaluation report:

Over 684,000 beneficiaries received CCM services from January 2015 to December 2016, the first two years of the new payment policy.

The decreased rate of growth was driven by decreases in expenditures for inpatient hospital services, skilled nursing facility services, and outpatient services; the decreased expenditures were partially offset by increased expenditures of home health and professional services. Researchers similarly found a lower rate of growth among CCM beneficiaries in hospitalizations and all-cause emergency department visits.

Receipt of CCM services was also associated with a reduced likelihood of an admission for the ambulatory care sensitive conditions of diabetes, congestive heart failure, urinary tract infection, and pneumonia among CCM beneficiaries, relative to the comparison beneficiaries.

A total of 16,549 individual healthcare providers billed for a total of $105.8 million in CCM fees in the first two years of the new payment policy.

Chronic Care Management beneficiaries were generally concentrated in the South and had poorer health status than the general Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) population.

About 19 percent of beneficiaries only received one month of CCM services; however the majority of beneficiaries received between four and ten months of CCM services, on average.

Primary care physicians (PCPs) billed for 68 percent of CCM claims and 42 percent of CCM billers were solo practitioners. Individual providers billed for $105.8 million in CCM fees during the first 24 months of the program and, on average, managed about 47 patients per month. However, the median number of patients was 10, indicating that the average was skewed by a small number of providers delivering CCM services to many beneficiaries. This translates to about $300 in CCM fees per month for providers furnishing CCM services to 10 beneficiaries.

The report did not examine the impact of 2017 CCM policy revisions that significantly increased payment for providing CCM to more medically complex patients.

OM1, an AI health outcomes and data company, has released an analysis on the impact of the new American College of Cardiology (ACC) and American Heart Association (AHA) high blood pressure guidelines. Using the OM1 Intelligent Data Cloud, OM1 performed preliminary analyses to evaluate the impact of the new guidelines on approximately 19 million adults over 20 years of age with more than 120 million blood pressure measurements, who had been seen for a scheduled visit over the last year.

A new infographic by OM1 highlights the findings of this data analysis.

Between Medicare’s aggressive migration to value-based payment models and MACRA’s 2017 Quality Payment Program rollout, healthcare providers must accept the inevitability of participation in fee-for-quality reimbursement design—as well as cultivating a grounding in health data analytics to enhance success.

As an early adopter of the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) and the largest sponsor of MSSP accountable care organizations (ACOs), Collaborative Health Systems (CHS) is uniquely positioned to advise providers on the benefits of data analytics and technology, which CHS views as a major driver in its achievements in the MSSP arena. In performance year 2014, nine of CHS’s 24 MSSP ACOs generated savings and received payments of almost $27 million.

Patients with chronic conditions rely on their healthcare teams to help them manage their health, according to a new infographic by West Corporation.

The infographic examines the steps providers can take to monitor and manage chronic disease among their patient populations.

In the sphere of value-based healthcare, chronic care management (CCM) is a critical component of primary care and population health management. Targeting the Triple Aim goals of better health and care for individuals while reducing spending, CCM is viewed as a stepping-stone to success under Medicare’s Quality Payment Program that launched January 1, 2017.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has updated the Chronic Care Management (CCM) rules for 2017 to improve adoption of CCM services by reducing the administrative burden on providers, according to a new infographic by CCM Navigator.

The infographic highlights these changes to CCM and new 2017 CCM codes.

A 2015 adopter of Medicare’s Chronic Care Management (CCM) reimbursement program, The Center for Primary Care (CPC) quickly expanded its CCM initiative to qualifying Medicare beneficiaries at its nine locations. Today, with a detailed profile of its CCM population and the health improvements and revenue that resulted, the CPC is leveraging this Chronic Care Management experience for participation in MACRA.

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The value of gaining experience and proficiency with population management and value-based reimbursement is becoming essential as Medicare shifts a greater portion of its payments to these methodologies. Medicare’s chronic care management reimbursement codes allow practices to get paid while learning about this new shift and gaining confidence and competence with value-based reimbursement, according to a new infographic by McKesson.

The infographic examines the incidence of chronic conditions among Medicare beneficiaries and the revenue opportunity for practices that bill Medicare under the Chronic Care Management codes.

A commitment to chronic care management (CCM) not only offers providers additional revenue via Medicare Chronic Care Management reimbursement but also can be a stepping stone to patient-centered care models like the medical home or accountable care organization (ACO). An inaugural Chronic Care Management survey by the Healthcare Intelligence Network captured current trends in chronic care management.

A new infographic by HIN examines current trends in Medicare chronic care management reimbursement.

The desire to improve health outcomes for individuals with serious illness coupled with opportunities to generate additional revenue have prompted healthcare providers to step up chronic care management initiatives. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services now reimburses physician practices for select chronic care management (CCM) services for Medicare beneficiaries, with more private payors likely to follow suit.

One of the Affordable Care Act’s lesser known goals is to improve Medicare’s coverage, care and financial outlook, according to a new infographic by the Commonwealth Fund.

The infographic drills down on the impact that the ACA has had on reducing gaps in care, improving chronic care management, emphasizing high-value care and slowing healthcare spending.

CMS’s ambitious agenda for moving Medicare into alternative payment models is driving the U.S. healthcare system toward greater value-based purchasing at a furious rate. Private payors also have pledged to continue to shift payments away from fee for service and into alternative payment models such as accountable care organizations (ACOs). Fortunately, many healthcare organizations are already exploring value-based payments—often a single innovation at a time—testing models that reward providers for meeting Triple Aim goals of improving patient experience and population health while reducing healthcare’s per capita cost.

11 Profitable Value-Based Reimbursement Models: Lessons from Early Adopters encapsulates nearly a dozen such approaches, from Bon Secours’ building of a business case for its multidisciplinary care team to the John C. Lincoln ACO’s deep dive into data analytics to identify and manage the care of high-risk, high-cost ‘VIP’ patients to ‘beat the benchmark’ to WellPoint’s engagement of specialists in care coordination.

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